A Game of Murder (22 page)

Of course she’d write a game with a female protagonist. The fear of water could serve as an ongoing obstacle in multiple puzzles. And she definitely liked the intoxicating hero part of it.

She spent much too much time with the places, characters, magic, and other generators, stopping only to get more coffee. Picking bits from each of the sections, her imagination added details, images, and sounds.

She only came up for air when Pixel hopped on her lap, purring loudly and bumping his head into her chin. Without thinking, she started stroking his head. Curious, she glanced at the clock in the corner of the screen. It was almost lunchtime. No wonder Pixel had interrupted her.

“All right. I guess you’ve waited long enough for food.” Her stomach growled and she laughed. “Me, too. Let’s get something to eat.”

“Meow,” Pixel said affirmatively and hopped down. If there was one word he understood, it was eat.

An hour later, both of them fed, the litter box cleaned, Faith showered and dressed, and a fresh pot of coffee brewing in the kitchen, they returned to the office. Pixel curled up on the rug for his other favorite activity: napping. Faith went over the notes she’d made earlier. The scribbles went on for pages, and it was obvious the amount of material was too voluminous and too complicated for a novice text adventure programmer to implement in less than a week. She needed to whittle this behemoth down to size.

A couple of hours later, she’d created all her passages—or locations—in Twine, complete with descriptions and connections. Creating her villain and her hero would be more difficult. She needed help.

Faith sent off an email to Rok asking for advice and direction. But she was too impatient to wait for him to answer.
 
She plugged in the thumb drive he handed out at the first class. The material on it referenced several online forums where a budding game designer could post questions. After her prior experience, Faith was leery of clicking on the links. Would they be as bad as the ones she visited before? Or had Rok omitted the nasty ones?

Faith went to several of the sites and was relieved to find them a lot less hostile. She gleaned some of the information she needed from prior posts, but remained unsure as to exactly what she needed to do. After posting her questions on each of the forums, she decided to add the game elements she knew how to implement.

Hours later her phone rang. Faith blinked away the vision of her imaginary medieval town and stared dumbly at the phone for a second. On the second ring, her brain returned to the real world, and she answered it. “Hello?”

“Hi, Faith. It’s Rok. I got your email.”

“Oh, Rok. Thanks for calling.” She gave him a quick summary of her questions and waited for his answers.

“We’re going to cover most of that in the next workshop,” he said. “I think the majority of the students will be writing Twine games, because they’re easier. My plan is to ask for questions like yours and use them to teach techniques to the whole class.”

“I can’t wait until the next class,” Faith wailed. She ran nervous fingers through her hair. “I have to submit my game in a week.”

“You’re still entering the comp?” Rok said incredulously.

Faith nodded, then, remembering he couldn’t see her, said, “Yes. I am.”

“Isn’t that a bit ambitious since you’ve never written a game before?”

Why did these guys not believe she was capable of doing this?
So far, it hadn’t been all that hard. “Maybe, but I’m going to try.” She debated with herself for a minute, then decided Rok was one of the good guys. He might even understand why she was doing this.
 

“You weren’t at the last meeting. Derek got to me with putting down people who aren’t members of his clique. He spoke to me as if he was issuing a challenge. I don’t back down from a challenge. So I repeated I intended to enter a Twine game.”

Saying it out loud made Faith wonder if she’d let her ego get in the way of her common sense. But it was too late now. The more difficult the problem, the more determined she was to solve it.

“Are you sure that was such a good idea?” Rok asked.

Annoyed that Rok, too, didn’t think she was capable of doing this, she asked, “Listen, are you going to help me or not?”

She heard his breath whoosh out in a sigh. “I’ll help you as much as I can.” He pointed her to the sections of the manual that applied to what she was trying to do. He also promised to send links to some games so she could see how others had coded the same kinds of puzzles.

Just when she was feeling more kindly toward Rok, thinking of apologizing for snapping at him, he concluded with, “I still don’t know if it’s a good idea for you to do this.”

Why was everyone trying to dissuade her?
She tried to keep control of her voice, make sure the words she said came out as a question and not the start of a fight. “Why not?”

“Remember Mira. She thought she could beat them at their own game, too.”

Was that a statement of concern? Or a threat?

* * *

The sky loomed dark outside her bedroom window when Faith opened her eyes. Exhausted after one sleepless night, her eyes burning from staring at her computer all day, she hadn’t been able to stay awake after feeding herself and Pixel last night. Going to bed early meant waking up long before her usual time, but she didn’t feel at all tired; the idea of going back to sleep didn’t make any sense.

If she could have slept. Rok’s words echoed in her brain, sending a frisson of fear down her spine. Perhaps he was right. After all, time she spent on the game was time she couldn’t spend on searching out the killer—or on her paying work. Excuses, both of them. She refused to be scared off by a bunch of Neanderthal computer geeks.
 

As she sat up, Pixel lifted his head and stared at her from the foot of the bed. Unlike humans, cats had no problem taking advantage of extra sleep time. “You can go back to sleep,” Faith told him. “Or you can come with me. I’m going to get up and see if I got any answers to my questions.”

Pixel’s eyes followed her as she walked toward the door, but he didn’t accompany her to the kitchen to put on the coffee. Which was just as well. Faith needed to focus on her game if she was to have any hope of completing it by Friday—now only three days, four if she counted today, away. She was anxious to see what Rok had sent her and what answers—if any—she’d gotten on the forums.

As promised, Rok had sent her a terse email following their telephone conversation. The entire contents consisted of three links and the words “Good luck.” A quick glance at the examples told her most of what she needed to know.

The morning passed quickly as Faith got deeper into coding her game, with only brief breaks for coffee, a slice of toast, and taking care of Pixel’s needs. A kink in her back and rumblings from her stomach eventually forced her to take a longer break. She also needed to clear her head.

With the temperature in the mid-seventies, a gentle breeze, and bright sunshine, Faith headed outdoors for the first time since the gamer meeting. She was making good progress, and her confidence in her ability to make the Friday deadline soared. She breathed deeply, savoring the desert perfume, listening to the many varieties of birds that passed through the Tucson area on their way south to winter quarters. Joyous. She felt joyous.

Unless she thought of John, but she shut that experience up in a box in the corner of her mind, to join another box nearby which held the memory of her brother’s death.
Done.
She’d focus on the good parts of her life, not the bad. Wasn’t that a pretty yard?, she thought as she passed a beautifully landscaped garden. She found herself singing
Walking on Sunshine
, filling in the words she didn’t remember with la-la-las.

After eating a bigger lunch than she probably should have, her appetite stimulated by the walk, Faith was eager to get back to her game. But before resuming, she remembered to check for answers to the questions she’d posted yesterday. She started with the first forum on the list and found her question. Her excitement at seeing the list of three replies quickly turned to dread as she read their contents.

“We don’t need any more wimpy, squishy Twine games. Why don’t you crawl back under your rock?”

“You want a violent, intoxicating hero? I’ll be right over. I’ll give you all the violence you want.”

“What you need is a good f***.”

Only there weren’t asterisks completing the last word. A lump formed in Faith’s throat. Her blood sang in her ears. More than slightly daunted, she tried the second site, hoping for a friendlier response. After a couple of brief replies of encouragement, the rest were more of what she’d found on the first site. Worse. Her heart stopped when she read the message that said:

“I’ll get you, my pretty! And your little cat, too.”

She looked over at the orange cat napping so trustingly by her side, worried that through no fault of his own, he might be in jeopardy. She got up and checked the locks on all her doors and windows. It was still daytime, but she didn’t want to take any chances. Which made her think about the night.

She’d always felt safe and secure in her house before. She’d picked a good neighborhood on purpose, knowing that as a woman alone she had to be careful. She didn’t feel secure any more.

Faith sat back down at her computer, hyper-alert for any strange noises, glancing over her shoulder toward the door before clicking on the link to the last forum. The chinks in her sense of security widened into cracks.

“Why don’t you off yourself like the other one did?”

“Gang bang at Faith’s house! Lube up, lady!”

Her pulse was racing like a runaway train. She knew what it was to be raped. She pushed another set of memories back into their corner and tried to forget.

Were the threats real? Would they really be able to find her in her nice little house in her nice little neighborhood?

She didn’t have to wait long for the answer. Hardly daring to keep her eyes open as she clicked on the next reply, she squeezed them tight when she saw it, hoping it would disappear when she reopened them. It didn’t. There, in plain view, was her address.

She jumped up from her chair, ran to the bathroom, vomited her lunch as tears streamed from her eyes. She washed and dried her face, then paced through her house—twice. When she reached her office the second time, she picked up her cell phone. With trembling fingers, Faith punched the speed dial number for Hope.

“Hey, girlfriend.” Hope’s cheery greeting hardly matched what Faith was feeling.

“Can I stay with you? And bring Pixel?” She held her breath.

“Why? What’s going on?” All the cheerfulness vanished from Hope’s voice and was replaced by concern.

Faith told her about the threats, to her and to Pixel, and ended with the information that her address had been posted online. By the time she finished, her voice was trembling as much as her hands. “I’m afraid to stay here alone tonight.”

There was a long silence at the other end of the line. Faith hadn’t expected that. They’d been friends since high school. Never had they denied one another anything. Until now.

“I’m sorry, Faith. I can’t.” Hope’s voice was strained.

“Why not?” Tears filled her eyes again, choked her throat.

“This time you’ve gotten yourself into real trouble. We know this person—or persons—killed Mira. I can’t risk making Walt and me targets as well. I can’t risk another incident that might interfere with the adoption.” Hope sobbed. “I’ve waited for so long, wanted this so much.”

“But what will I do? Where will I go?” Loneliness and isolation dropped around her like a shroud. Even Hope had abandoned her.

“Call the police. Tell them about the threats.”

Hope was right. She should report the threats, even if she wasn’t sure they’d be able to do anything about them. But she would still feel safer if she and Pixel were anywhere but here.

“I wish I could help you, Faith. I’m sorry I can’t. But I will pray for your safety. I’d suggest you pray, too. God is the one you can always depend on.”

As the call ended, Faith wished her belief was as strong as Hope’s. She didn’t have much faith that God cared about what happened to her, much less wanted to prevent it. The police probably were a better bet.

“Tucson Police Department.”

“I’d like to speak with Detective Kastner, please.”

Faith went through the sequence of events leading up to today, then gave the detective the websites where the threats had been posted.

“I’ll pass this along to our computer people, but it will take time to identify the perpetrators. We still haven’t ID’d the people who harassed Mira Levinson.”

“But what can be done now?” Faith was frantic. Kastner was treating this like it was a dog pooping in her front yard.

“Make sure your doors and windows are locked.”

She already did that. Too antsy to sit still, she got up and paced down the hall, stopping to peer out the kitchen window. A pot of marigolds on her patio wilted in the sun. Did she dare go out to water them?

“Don’t answer the door if you don’t know who’s on the other side.”

As if. She also doubted she’d answer the door if Derek or Stan or any of those guys were there. She moved to the front door and squinted through the peephole. The neighbor across the street pulled into his driveway, opened the garage, drove the car inside.

“I’ll make sure a patrol goes by your house during the night,” he said with a note of finality.

“That’s it?” She cycled to her bedroom, stuck her hand through the gap between two slats and spread her fingers so she could see outside. An Arizona cardinal landed on the mesquite tree, eying the hummingbird feeder, then flew away.

“At this time, that’s all we can do.”

Which wasn’t much. She stopped by the bathroom, pushed back the shower curtain to make sure no one was hiding in the tub.

“I’ll give you an update tomorrow.”

If she were still alive. She paced back down the hall to the front of the house.

“Good evening, Miss Andersen.” Click.

Faith stood in the middle of the living room and stared out the front window. The sun was starting to set. Soon it would be dark, darker than most places because of Tucson’s dark skies program that prohibited most artificial lighting because of the observatories. The idea of spending the night in her house alone was too much to face.